The issue of UC's management of three national Department of Energy laboratories moved forward on two fronts in February and March. The Senate's Academic Council voted to appoint a subcommittee charged with laying out a set of options the Council could pursue with respect to renegotiation of labs management contracts, and the UC Santa Barbara Senate voted to submit to mail ballot of its members a resolution urging that UC phase out its management of the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national labs.
The Academic Council appointed UC Davis Senate Chair Lawrence Coleman to head a four-member subcommittee that will bring to the Council a set of options on the contracts-renewal issue. A decision from DOE is expected soon on whether it will extend UC's management of the labs or solicit competitive management bids from other institutions. (The University of Texas is heading a group of institutions that have expressed an interest in managing Los Alamos.) The UC Regents may thus be called to make a decision within a few months on whether UC wishes to continue managing the labs. Thus far, the Academic Council has taken no position either on labs management or on any possible modifications to the labs contracts, should they be renegotiated.
At Santa Barbara the Faculty Legislature decided on February 29 to submit to mail ballot vote of all UCSB Senate members a proposition on UC's management of the two weapons-related laboratories, Los Alamos and Livermore. The faculty will be asked to ratify or overturn the statement that "The UCSB Faculty Legislature urges that the University of California, in a timely and orderly manner, phase out responsibility for operating the Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories."
This wording is drawn from the recently submitted report of the Senate's University Committee on Research Policy (UCORP). One of the committee's recommendations was that Senate divisions votes on the statement. Results of the UCSB mail vote are expected late in April.